Woburn High Participates in "Koats for Kids"

by Jen Yao

Mix 104.1 recently hosted Koats For Kids, a charity event that collected winter coats and donated them to families. The school that donates the most wins a concert from none other than the famous pop singer-guitarist of love songs, Ed Sheeran. With twenty-seven other schools participating, Woburn Memorial High School raced to collect as many coats as they can and win the ultimate prize.

Senior Haley Flight discovered the event and proposed the idea to participate. Thus, the National Art Honor Society, led by Sarah Dugan, hosted the event at the school with the help of some clubs. You may have seen their artistic abilities on posters in the staircases and on flyers in the bathrooms. But juniors Brianna Meagher and Kate Girardi, who are both in the National Art Honor Society, explained that that is not all they did to promote the event.

“We had a drop off table set up, and we had people ask their parents to collect if they work in an office,” Meagher described.

“We also handed the flyers out around town and used social networking sites, like Twitter and Facebook,” Girardi added.

With such hard-core determination and sweaty toil, the National Art Honor Society collected over 275 coats and 31 bags from January 10 to 23. Then, they donated everything to the Big Brother Big Sister of Boston and waited for the winner to be announced.

After the seemingly long and impatient wait, Mix 104.1 announced the winner on the morning of January 28. It is sad to say that Woburn High did not win the Ed Sheeran concert. Instead, it went to Notre Dame Academy. Meagher explained her feelings about the result of the coat drive competition.

“We didn’t win the contest, but that wasn’t really the important thing; our main goal was to help people in need and we definitely achieved that. It would have been nice to win, but it feels good to be giving generously without receiving a reward in return,” Meagher commented.

Even though Woburn High did not win its first charity contest with the promise of a celebrity appearance, that doesn’t mean that we are ready to give up when the next one comes around.

“I think it would be great to do another contest like this, because it doesn’t just give people incentive to donate and provide for others but they also get the reward of just knowing that they helped someone out,” Meagher said.

And when asked if they would participate in another contest such as Koats For Kids, Meagher and Girardi both agreed that they would.

“I would definitely because it’s a great way to help out and contribute to the society,” Girardi commented.

“Personally, I donated a ton of coats, and I think we could have done better promoting it and getting more people to donate. But it was our first one, so we will definitely try and do better next time. In the meantime, it was just nice to help out people in need.”

In total, Mix 104.1 collected over 12,000 coats and was extremely pleased with the outcome.